A week of weather

England has been proudly displaying its capacity for weather this week. And I have been alternately revelling in it and reviling it.

On Monday, I woke to vast (for the area I live in) amounts of snow. At first, I thought it would melt away by the time I was ready for work, but over breakfast I watched snow falling and swirling outside.

At 0813 hours, my boss telephoned me. Standing at my bedroom window, I gazing out at the white street and mulling about whether I could - or should - cycle to work. He informed me he had been trying to get to work since 0700 hours (weirdo) and that he was now going to turn around and go home. He asked how I was going to make my way to work and I blithely informed him I might cycle, or walk. Soon.

I and my partner made our way - on foot - through the snow-covered streets. A bus was abandoned at the end of our street. People were milling about everywhere: pegging snowballs at each other; sliding along the ice; laughing and marvelling at the snow; and building snow men. Everyone grinned at everyone else.

We were set free from work early, but already the snow was melting away from roads and pavements. Still, snow continued to fall and it flurried around my face. I know now what a flurry is: gorgeous.

On Tuesday, I expected to wake to slush. Instead, I woke to snow still on the ground and more snow falling. This was more fabulous than I could possibly imagine.

I walked to work again, but things were a little dour. The world was less crisp and the snow more dangerous. The sky was grey. The streets were quieter. The fresh snow fall lay on top of ice, so was rather slippery, but interestingly crunchy, underfoot.

At 1000 hours, I rang my boss to find out whether he was going to make it into work. In the background, I could hear his son; he had tried and failed.

On Wednesday, I expected to wake to slush. I did wake to slush, but there were still minor bits of snow about the place. I decided to cycle into work because the roads looked reasonably non-icy.

Elsewhere in England, it snowed. Where I live, the sky dumped gentle sleet. (Yes, it's possible. I had not thought this was possible because the only sleet I had ever experienced before was on top of Mt Russell in Tasmania. That sleet was mean, horizontal and very painful, like some throwing a million needles at you. Wednesday's sleet was not so sharp. More like slivers of soft hair whipping your face. It was okay.)

Then, it hailed; again, gently. The balls of ice were very little (and rather cute). Again, I have only experienced nasty hail - the kind that bruises heads and smashes windscreens. After the hail, came some more snow but, somehow, lacking in conviction.

At 0930 I rang my boss who was still trying to get to work. He decided to keep trying and eventually got in at about 1100. He should not have bothered.

On Thursday, I woke to rain. Lots and lots of rain. I kitted up in all my rain gear and cycled into work. By the time I got in, my cheeks were frozen (not quite literally but it sure felt like it). This was the first time the rain had been so cold. I thought, I can take this. This is fine.

Snow was but a distant memory. Strange clumps of ice and dirt were the remnants of Monday's joyous snowmen artistry.

My workmates laughed (not cruelly) as I trudged into the office. I huddled beside my radiator to thaw out.

My boss beat me to work that morning.

On Friday, I woke to rain. Here we go again, I thought, grimacing as I pulled on my waterproof trousers.

Inexplicably, between the time of putting on my trousers and wheeling my bike outside the rain had cleared. In its stead, a wind came along. A horrid, icy head wind that made cycling rather unpleasant indeed. At least, a head wind means a tail wind home (I thought).

My boss did not come into work; he had booked the day off as annual leave.

At 1030, I watched rain, hail and snow beat up against my office window. My thoughts strayed to the trainee in my department who had, unfortunately, chosen the worst half hour to take the 20 minute round trip to court. She came back looking remarkably chipper; rosy cheeks suit her smooth, porcelain white skin.

I cycled home, in a head wind. This was the height of unfairness and I was oh-so tempted to circumvent the big hill and go home the wrong way down a one-way street. Ultimately, I decided not to (partially because I was complaining inside my head so much I forgot to not cycle my normal route home). I thought about walking my bike up the hill, but as I started climbing (it's a roughly 30 degree grade over about 200 metres), another cyclist was pushing her bike. Enough to spur my competitive edge, I grunted and huffed and sniffed my way past her.

So ends my week of weather. Weather is predicted for the next few weeks.

Sub-Zero

The temperatures have been sub-zero in the last few weeks (though it has now warmed up again).

This has been quite exciting, although cycling into work in the mornings is hard.
Actually, getting up in the mornings is hard. My bed is nice and warm. My house is reasonably warm. I even have underfloor heating in the bathroom and in a defiant burst of extravagance programmed for it to come on and warm the bathroom floor on weekday mornings.

All encouragement to get me out of bed when it is minus 5 outside is welcome.

My main gripe with sub-zero temperatures is that it is not snowing. Surely, if it is sub-zero, then it must snow. Surely, this is the way things are. There can be no other way. But no, no snow. Every morning, lots of frost but no snow.

I went for a long(ish) cycle ride on Friday and for mere moments, snowflakes fell onto my nose, causing me to go cross-eyed so I could see them. I held out my tongue to see if I could catch a few. I could not.

I wonder what the cars coming in the opposite direction thought of brightly coloured me, cycling along, tongue out like an overheated dog. Another mad cyclist?

The other mad cyclists who bicycle commute into work or school/uni of a winter morning all look pretty happy to me. I tend to be smiling as I cycle along - I love cycling in the cold - and my fellow cyclists seem equally chuffed.

I wear three pairs of socks: tights, a thin liner sock, a thick outer sock.
I wear four layers of tops: a singlet/vest, my workshirt (usually a knit or jersey 3/4 or long sleeve top), a fleece jumper and my wind&water-proof cycling jacket.
I wear two layers of bottoms: tights and corduroy trousers.
My neck is wrapped in a red or green scarf and a 'buff' that I fashioned by cutting up a pair of old trackie-dacks (tracksuit trousers / sweat pants) that no longer fit me.
My head sports a naff yellow beanie (woolly hat, touk) with ear flaps and dangly plait bits and helmet.

I am the very epitome of sartorial elegance on a bike.

Bosses and Cherubs

I must stop being so inordinately pleased by the fact that I outwitted a 6 year old. It is ... unseemly.

I babysat for some friends on Saturday night. They went off to see the new Bond movie and for some dancing. I read to their two boys - let's call them Boss and Cherub -, watched them fall asleep and then crept into the loft conversion to settle in with a good book, listening out for any sleep disturbances. There were very few.

As I was reading to both boys, Cherub fell asleep on me and when I finished the story, I shifted him to his bed. Boss said, "Is Cherub asleep?" I nodded. "You know, Oanh, sometimes, when one of us falls asleep before the other one, the other one can stay up to watch TV."

Me: "Hey, that's a great idea. Just to make sure Cherub is definitely asleep, though, let's wait 5 minutes and pretend we're asleep, too."

Boss: "Okay."

So the little Boss curled over, smiled up at me and closed his eyes, pretending he is asleep. He was such a good pretender that he actually did fall asleep. I almost did as well, but as I was sitting on the floor between two beds, and not lying down on a nice comfy mattress with doona, I managed to bestir myself. Grinning because I had not been tricked into letting Boss stay up watching TV, I turned the lights off.

It was a very wet, very windy and overall miserable night. The book I had chosen from my friends' shelves was Diana Wynne Jones' The Time of the Ghost, a rather unsettling story. As the wind lashed around the house and rain beat against the windows, I read. I almost turned the TV on because the story scared me so much - except I had to finish the story so that it would leave me. Otherwise, I would stay afraid.

Every now and then, I went down to the boys' room to see if they were okay. They'd moved from where they'd started, and kicked off their doonas (although being English, they'd probably call them duvets). A few times, Cherub called out in his sleep and I came in to comfort him. The way he sat bolt upright, eyes closed, lurching forwards for a hug was at once disconcerting and utterly charming. The first time, I murmurred at him, "Mum's out, but it's me, Oanh's here. It's okay," He came fully awake, which worried me, until he said, with his head to one side, "Hello, Oanh!" as if I had just turned up at his house. He gave me a hug and settled back to sleep.

Later, Boss woke and came looking for me. "Are Mum and Dad not back yet?" he asked. "No, but I'm still here," said me, "Are you okay? Do you want to stay up?" "No, I'll go back to bed." But he stood, confused, in front of me. I got onto my knees to give him a hug, and asked him if he wanted anything, "Another story? A pee? Water?" To the last, I got a nod, so I trotted off to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. He drank, gave me a hug and then went back to his bed.

I love the tactility of children. These two, in particular, have no qualms about demanding hugs or climbing onto your lap to talk to you. Cherub has a habit of reaching his hand to your cheek as he talks, or of putting his face right in front of your face. Boss likes to hold onto you while he is talking.

There is something so upsetting about a child upset in its sleep, and something so comforting about being able to soothe a child, with rubs on the back and murmurred words of,"It's okay", even though I don't know what's wrong or what I would do if I did know what was wrong.

Much later, their parents came home. I was comforting Cherub at the time and trying to settle him back to sleep, but they'd missed him so much they were quite happy to take over the settling part. "You okay?" Dad whispered at me. "Totally fine. They were great." Boss woke and said, "Dad!" and "Bye Oanh!" and Cherub sleepily lifted his arm to wave at me, and I snuck off.

Oh, and I finished the book.

Gardening with the Seasons (Part II)

or: How (& why) I planted bulbs (I'll try not to digress this time)

Gardening in the northern hemisphere, with seasons is completely unlike gardening in tropical Brisbane. (Such riveting news, I thought I should repeat it).

In Brissie, I just planted whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And watered. Just like my dad told me to.

Like my dad, I did other things too, which I, like him, seem less inclined to tell people about: preparing the soil, digging in compost, turning the soil over, etc. I did not really do much of that. My partner did the bulk of it, when I decided it was time to do it. He'd watch me struggling with the spade, digging ineffectual holes and then take over.

It just took me longer to dig holes. In the far-away time before my partner, I dug my own holes. I would strike at the earth with the spade a few times experimentally. Then plunge the spade in. Then again. Then, with spade left in, wiggle it about a bit. Then plunge again. Then sit down for a rest. Then go get a drink. Then return to try again. It took me a while to dig a hole, but I always succeeded. I'm persistent.

Oh dear, I'm digressing again.

After we moved from the Little Flat to the Little House, I was most excited about the idea of having a garden again. I dug a hole (I did this myself, while my partner was away. It took three times as long as it would have done if he was present as he would have taken the spade away from me after my first few experimental strikes at the clay-y patch of earth I had decided would be our veggie patch). Into the hole, I buried the Bokashi contents from our flat. I mixed it all in and left it alone.

A few weeks later, we bought seeds of things we wanted to plant: beans, spinach, lettuce, silverbeet; and some flowers: nasturtiums, poppies, foxglove, honeysuckle, passionflower, jasmine.

A few weeks later again, we had some time to actually plant. On reading the labels of the seeds we'd bought, I realised we'd missed our window of opportunity for planting most of the flowers. The poppies and foxgloves should have gone in shortly after we bought them (should have realised this from the fact that I was now seeing foxgloves and poppies in the woodlands and other people's gardens ... probably therefore past their sowing time). We planted everything else, plus some of the basil that was outgrowing its pot.

That's just not how it works in Brisbane. Stuff grows year round. You can plant it year round. And if you can't, then it's only because it's too hot. Don't plant in December, January or February. In those months, you won't know if the sun will wither your plant to a burnt crisp of its former self, or if a torrential downpour will relocate your seedling or seeds, somewhere else, entirely out of your control. Or both. On the same day.

In England, the slugs got almost everything. They destroyed the basil in one night. Seedlings would disappear as soon as they emerged from the earth. We tried everything organic: eggshells, coffee grinds, hair. The only thing that worked was a plastic pot (formerly containing yoghurt) half buried in the ground, half filled with beer. The slugs would go for it, instead of the emergent seedlings. But, by then, we only had a very few seeds left. All that grew was a lone stand of silverbeet. It was much too late in the year to plant any more seeds.

Flower-wise, most things grew fine. The slugs did not like nasturtiums one bit, so we planted more of them round the edge of our veggie patch as a barrier. They make our garden look productive, rather than bare. But it is bare. It is bare of vegetables. We were demoralised. So demoralised, we even forgot to eat the silverbeet, so it is now unpalatably bitter.

Quite a few weeks ago, I was flipping through the weekend paper and read about planting bulbs. I adore the bright flowers that pop up at the end of winter, heralding spring. I bear much affection for them, as they first greeted me in this new land. It was so exciting to see white and purple crocuses, daffodils and snowdrops, growing like weeds. They symbolise England for me. They are so very different to what you can get in Brisbane: delicate blooms, thriving on cold, redolent of the changing of the seasons. And they epitomise English gardening: you have to sow them many months before anything happens. You have to PLAN.

So, I sent off for some bulbs: 100 crocuses, 70 daffodils, 50 tulips. I have grand visions of my front garden being a field of English flowers, in miniature: in February, crocuses; March, daffodils; April, tulips; and then, it will be time to plant foxgloves and poppies, ready to bloom for summer.

We planted the bulbs last weekend. My partner lifted the grass / lawn (an aggravating operation that the word 'lift' belies); I mixed potting mix with the soil and placed the bulbs in their randomly appointed spots; we finished by walking over the lawn, stomping the grass back into place.

Now, we wait.

A solo ride

I did a long(ish) solo cycle ride over the weekend. My first, ever. I've been on longer rides, but always with other people. I did my own navigating (a rare thing; see my last post).

These are my statistics of the event.

Kilometres travelled: 36.32
Miles travelled: 22.7
Time taken for the ride: Three hours (give or take).

Hills ascended: Three (oof).
Hills descended: wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Number of times I had to stop to check the map: At every juncture, um, maybe fifteen? Then, I checked the map obsessively during lunch.

Wrong turns taken: only one! Although, it was a biggie ... I turned right, instead of left, when leaving the Stately Home (see below) to cycle back home again. I realised after no more than a kilometre, so I was not well on the way to Scotland before I did an about face and cycled back past the little family of ramblers to whom I had just called out, "Hi there! Bike behind!" and to whom I now said, "Hi again! Silly cyclist coming back!" Mum and Dad grinned and kids waved.

Number of stupid cars who cut in front of me: One. Red. Driven by a blonde woman with a shoulder length bob. I'd recognise her again. Harrumph.

Number of nice drivers who shared the road with me: Lots. Yay them.

Number of steam-rollers passed: One, with me grinning a most amused grin, and the driver waving at me.

Amount of (rooibos) tea ingested: one thermos, or four cups.

Stately homes visited: One.
Regency dances viewed: Four.
Roses smelled: Seven (Pilgrim was best and Graham Thomas came a close second).
Time spent meandering around the Stately Home's grounds, having lunch, reading my book, drinking my thermos of tea, admiring the gardens, feeling jealous about the gardens, resisting buying a book from the second-hand book store nestled in the Stately Home's cellarium and contemplating whether I should cycle home soon because it might rain: Three and one half hours.

Punctures incurred: one
Punctures fixed: none
Spare carried: Thank goodness.
Tyre changed: YES!
Time spent considering whether I could fix the puncture, giving up and changing the inner tube instead: 45 minutes.

Offers of help declined: One

Times I considered catching the train home: Only once, initially, when I discovered where the puncture was on my inner tube (Right at the valve. Was that repairable? I had to phone a friend to double-check. The answer was no. My heart sunk.) But the train station was two miles from where I currently was, plus my home station is about two miles from home. That's pushing a bike a total of four, painstakingly slow, miles. I thought I'd rather spend ages trying to change the tyre before giving up to catch the train. But no! I am competent at practical things.

Number of nice old people who offered me their soap and water to wash my mucky hands: Two. And the old dude apologised for not offering to help because I "looked very professional changing the tyre". I beamed. And the old lady said,"He would not have been any good, love" and winked. Bless. I did not ask why they were carrying soap to visit a Stately Home (Gift horse. Mouth. Don't Look.)

Number of children who stood around giggling at my attempts to change my inner tube: Six. Go away children! You're not making it any easier.
Number of children who leapt about me and my bike and my worldly possessions (novel, check; beanie, check; thermos, check; emergency chocolate, check) scattered on the lawn: Two (but it felt like twenty). I discovered my puncture in the parking lot of the Stately Home, just prior to my homeward cycle, hence the abundance of people.

Number of trout in stream: One! Large! Spotty!

Photographs taken: None. I had no space to carry the Fuji camera (and my partner had the Ricoh) - I really need a pannier rack and pannier bags, but, because I am vertically challenged (who you callin' short, huh?), I cannot fit a pannier rack onto my bike (the seat is not high enough and a pannier rack attaches to the wheel nuts as well as to the joist thing holding the seat up.). My, there sure were a lot of qualifying clauses in that last sentence. I'm working on raising my seat, but I currently have the seat at just the height when, if I am at a stop, I am on my very tippiest of tippy-toes to hold steady, and even so, I regularly tumble. Gracefully, of course.

Bullets of Spring

• When ever I read another blogger's bullets, the They Might Be Giant's song, Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love, starts running through my head. Specifically (Freudian?) this bit runs through my head:-

Bullets from a gun

Bullets through the atmosphere

Here they come

John, I've been bad

And they're coming after me

Done someone wrong

And I fear that it was me

Sapphire bullets

Bullets of pure love

• Actually, that's pretty much the entirety of the song.

• It is spring! There are yellow daffodils and purple and white crocuses everywhere. Blackthorn is out, magnolias are budding and the robins, with their proud orange chests, are back.

• Even though it is spring, it is still bitterly (according to me) cold. It still looks like winter outside my office window becuase the sawn off tree has no buds and the tree beside it looks like whoever waters it has been doing a rather poor job.

• Our herbs on the kitchen windowsill are, however, very pleased to greet spring. My oregano leaves are almost a centimetre in diameter, the mint is growing new shoots everywhere and my laxoleaf's leaves are the biggest I have ever seen them. My Hungarian black chilli also has lots of new, pretty purple flowers.

• I am trying to ascertain the effects of Bokashi juice on my herbs. They've been watered with Bokashi juice twice in the last three weeks. Unfortunately, the watering coincided with the arrival of (ever-so-slightly) warmer weather and sun, so I don't know to what I should attribute the enthusiastic growth.

• I'm inlcined to attribute it to the Bokashi juice, except that I know the herbs did this last year too, sans juice.

• The Bokashi is otherwise going swimmingly, thanks for asking. We have almost filled our first bucket, and will need to move onto the next one.

• It only took us three weeks to fill our bucket. We are obviously not your average family. My partner hypothesises that our accelerated filling of the bucket is because we prepare almost all of our meals from scratch (i.e. no pre-packaged stuff). I think it is because we are greedy and eat too much.

Compost-ing

When we moved to England, I knew that we would be moving to a smaller place. One of the things that I hoped living in a smaller space would do, was to make me reduce my tendency to hoard things, to rationalise my consumer desires and to become a bit 'greener'. For starters, we would not have a car, and we would not be buying one. For another, we would be hanging out with my family less, so we could consume less meat. To be honest, that was about the extent of how I thought the way we lived our lives day-by-day would change in coming to the UK. I can be a bit blithely naive sometimes.

One of the first things that shocked me about the UK was how many chain stores there were, how enormous the supermarkets were, and how I could not find a greengrocer. It was awfully hard finding a cafe, that was not Costas or Nero or Starbucks. Like a country bumpkin, I stood in one humungous Asda (ultra-supermarket) and just stared at how large it was. It was, perhaps, my old local supermarket (which was inner-city and reasonably large) squared, or maybe even cubed. It was, like, really, really BIG.

Initially, we bought fruit and veggies from the supermarket and bemoaned the packaging. Everything was wrapped in plastic and/or came on a plastic tray. For the month or so that I was jobless, I wandered the streets collecting groceries. I found one greengrocer but he was about a mile and a half from where we were living, and not particularly good. We found an organic supermarket and greengrocer but they were on a farm, about two miles from the nearest train station, and not a very popular station at that (the train only stopped there at random times, when the driver felt like, I suppose). We visited once, trekking across a cow field and getting our shoes all muddy, to buy our groceries. We did pass a quaint church and a toll bridge across a lovely patch of water. But it wasn't really going to become our regular grocery shop.

Then we moved into our Little Flat, and I got A Job, and convenience became the key priority. I found a supermarket nearby work, which I would visit in my lunch times because I had not yet made friends with my workmates and did not have a lunch time companion or three (is that a violin I hear?). I started buying groceries randomly - whatever would fit in my bag, whatever caught my eye, whatever was on special. I would place on the conveyor belt an onion, three tins of tomatoes, lentils, laundry detergent and ginger beer. The next day, I would buy yoghurt, a bag of apples, a bag of parsnips, cleaning cloths and two boxes of veggie sausages. This went on for a good couple of months, until my workmates starting coming to the supermarket with me, because it was clearly the funnest thing to do at lunchtime. Eventually, I felt sorry for them and started having lunch with them and not frequenting the supermarket so often.

And our waste! Vegetables surprised me by going rotten much more quickly than in Australia. The potatoes I bought would sprout green tendrils, which meant I should not eat them, or feed them to my partner and, at the time, only friend in England. If he died, who would I talk to? Broccoli turned yellow and carrots went floppy. Did you know it was really difficult to find cauliflower which was not already brown at the edges? (Well, it was. I tried. I *love* cauliflower.) There I was, thinking that the cooler weather meant veggies would last longer. Alas, not so. Food miles made their detrimental effect on the food itself, and not just the environment, felt.

The cooler weather did enable butter to be left out of the fridge. That was very exciting.

In Australia, I did not worry too much about throwing out organic waste (rotten fruit and veggies) because we had a compost bin. It actually took us about a year and a half - and a birthday present - before we composted in a bin. Prior to that, we'd just been collecting the waste and occassionally digging a hole directly into the garden. This is what my parents had always done, and I never quite understood the wonder of the black plastic compost bins. My parents would collect all organic waste - cooked food, meat and seafood - in various buckets and bury it in the garden. I tried to do this when I lived in a share house (I ended up digging a deep hole and just adding to it, or collecting organic waste and taking it home to my parents). Burying compost is all well and good - but you need time. And neither of us had much of that. So the compost bin was a godsend. (Actually, it was sent by my partner's mother, together with red worms and a pitchfork. Probably one of the best birthday presents, ever.)

In England, we do not have a garden. We live in a Little Flat. I have never lived in a flat before. Our Little Flat does not have a balcony. Composting in a bin, or at all, is not possible. We mulled over the idea of getting an allotment for a while, but our weekends were jammed with rambles (hikes / bushwalks / tramps) and jaunts to London or elsewhere. I had, unconsciously, assumed that any flat we lived in would have a balcony and so I could get a worm farm for my balcony. Alas, no balcony = no worm farm. All our organic waste went into the bin.

This worried me for a long time. I spent long days surfing the internet for various indoor composting techniques. Everything came back to either the worm farm or some strange new-fangled thing called Bokashi. (Actually, there was also this electronic composter thing, but it cost 300 US dollars, would need to be posted to the UK from the US and just seemed ridiculous. It was not an option.)

Last year, after much discussion and net-surfing, we decided against both. The worm farm would still be too large for our Little Flat, and the Bokashi system still had the problem of what to do with the end result of pickled rotten veggies (yum yum!) Bokashi also had a problem of whatever those enahnced microorganisms were. I understand worms. I don't understand enhanced bran and molasses. And nothing I was reading helped me to understand. So we resorted to collecting our organic waste and giving it away to a hippie workmate of my partner's, who had not one, but two, compost bins. I also bought a compost bin and gave it away to another of my partner's workmates, as a bribe so we could occassionally dump our veggie scraps on her.

This system worked fine and dandily until my partner's workmate, inconsiderately, hurt her back and could not take the veggie scraps because she was not able to carry very much, and also not very often in her garden. In the habit of collecting veggie scraps, my kitchen bench had three plastic bags of rotten vegetables, the decaying process happily kicking in and organic juices seeping out of the plastic. It was, in a word, gross.

So I started reading about Bokashi again. And this time, one year on, many more people have it and have used it, and can attest to it. Since entering the blogging world, I tend to trust bloggers' reviews of products. I can guage how similar I am to them, or their process of thinking, by reading happily around their archives and deciding whether or not what they say can apply to me. I tend to search reviews on the internet and specifically on blogs.

And here's what I've found.

Basically, the Bokashi system of compost requires enhanced bran, and a plastic bucket with air tight lid (but preferably two of them). You put your scraps in a bucket, and sprinkle magic bran onto the scraps as you go. Once you've filled a bucket, you put the lid on tight and ignore it for at least two weeks. (Well, okay, you can't *completely* ignore it, because you have to drain it of juices every couple of days.) At the end, you will have pickled rotten veggies, which can be added to your compost bin, or directly into your garden. This end product is a problem for us - but I had the epiphany that it is a not dissimilar problem to the bags of veggies scraps seeping brown juices onto my lovely, almost always clean, kitchen benchtop.

Initially, I avoided Bokashi Man because, although he's a blogger, he was a seller of the Bokashi bran and plastic buckets. I thought he would be commercial. But eventually, I returned to his site and had a proper read. He is full of useful information, and is not just trying to sell his product. Indeed, he directed a person from New Zealand (we Aussies call them Kiwis, but I think perjoratively, so perhaps I should not) to another site from which they could purchase the product. He's also a decent read, once you get over your stupid prejudice (if you're me).

I also found very useful Clean Air Gardening and I think it, more than anything else, persuaded me, because it has week by week accounts of the whole Bokashi saga. Clean Air Gardener seems to drink as much tea as I do, his tea bag count in his Bokashi is of supreme interest to me.

I also liked Compost Guy because he's making his own magic bran. Maybe one day I will too. And when I do, Compost Guy, you will be my guru.

There were other random sites that I visited and which pushed me over the edge into Bokashi-mania. A tip I picked up, and which had completely eluded me until I read it, was that people in allotments would welcome my pickled rotten veggie scraps. Yes, even complete strangers would welcome me, carting my bucket of organic waste, with open arms and would not look at me askance for being so worked up about binning veggie matter. So, if my partner's workmates were not at home, or on holiday, or their bin was too full with their own veggie scraps, I could wander down to the nearest allotment and charm my way into someone else's veggie patch. Hell, I'd even dig the hole to bury it in, because I know how to do that sort of stuff.
I just haven't for a long time, that's all.

The final nail in the coffin, however, was that I could order the whole Bokashi system from Amazon, to whom I have already disclosed my personal details and who I know deliver reliably. Bemoaning the UK postal system is a whole other post.

So, I now wait excitedly and somewhat impatiently for my Bokashi. I know you too await with baited breath my next update. Don't. You already know it might take me forever.

Now it really *is* the New Year.

It never feels like a new year until Tet arrives, and speeds away again. Chuc Mung Nam Moi to all my friends out there, the lurkers (I know you're there!), the folks who stumble here looking for banh canh recipes (sorry, kids), and the randoms who post such intriguing comments as this informative snippet on my post about the ao dai:-

I like to wear comfortable dresses which I like to buy from Brooks Brothers and Old Navy stores through couponalbum.com

Good for you, buddy. I decided not to delete the comment. When I first read it, I was very confused. Then I giggled. Ms Couponalbum.com, you amuse me for the left-fielded-ness of your comment. If we were having a conversation, I would have raised my eyebrow at you. But I am not fooled. I have not visited those websites.

This morning, I telephoned my family to wish them Chuc Mung Nam Moi. I had received, through my email, a notice for all and sundry to descend on my parents for the usual Tet festivities (food, bau cua ca cop, food, other card games, more food). Sadly, due to the lengthy commute, I had to decline. I have been trying to telephone my parents for the last few days to have our usual chat (time in our respective locales, weather, health, cost of phone call, hang-up), but without success.

I telephoned from my mobile, at work. 10am my time, 8pm theirs.

My brother answers the phone. "Hey O," he says, completely unsurprised to hear from me. "Hey bro," I reply, as if I don't miss him madly and as if his brief, prosaic emails to me don't bring tears to my eyes. "Happy New Year!" We both say at the same time. And then, because we have been brought up terribly politely, "Huh? What?" also at the same time. I give up on this game first, "Is everybody there?" I ask. "Yep," he replies, "It's really noisy." I laugh. I can hear in the background all my nieces and nephews squealing away, and talking over the top of each other. "Who's winning?" I ask my bro. "Grump is. She put some money on bau and it came up triples!" "What's happening now?" "Ba's trying to teach them cat te." "Who's he teaching?" "All the little ones: SpiderBoy, Grump, Princess, MyGirl."

Cat te (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling) is my father's favourite card game. I do not remember when he taught me; it seems as if I have always known how to play. Like riding a bike, I don't ever expect to forget. The eldest of the little ones listed above is 5. Cat te involves six cards, and playing tricks by suits, and a pot of money in the middle, called the 'heo' (pig), which is collected by the winner. It is a difficult game to describe, and requires demonstration. I like it for its flourish at the end game. I cannot imagine any of the little ones grasping the idea of the game. It's difficult enough teaching them the rules of 'catch'. Ba is an impatient man, but unnervingly patient when it comes to kids and card games.

My mother comes onto the phone. We deal with the important things first: (Are you well? Yes I'm well. What's the time there? Morning, and you? Night. How's the weather? The weather's sunny, and you? Oh it's been raining here non-stop!) I tell her that I have been trying to call, without success. She tells me that, due to the incessant rain*, the phone line has been playing up. The only way to get her is to ring my parents' mobile, or to ring my brother's mobile who will then ring her and tell her to ring whoever rang him. I have no idea how ringing my brother is an efficient way of getting onto my parents, but Um seems to think it is. I don't bother trying to get her to explain. I wish her a happy new year, and she wishes the same to me and my partner. Then she says something like, "Oh, I think that I... Old man, talk to your daughter," and the phone is handed to my father. I assume she has gone off to check how some food is going, but I cannot say for sure. I have the same brief conversation with my father.

*Yay! Brisbane, Rain. Yay!

I can hear my siblings in the background, and distinguishable voices float out at me. That's the Big Boss laughing, and the Accountant telling a story. I can hear the little ones clamouring for my father's attention. I can tell my father is distracted from our conversation as the card game is still going. I say goodbye, as I am at work and shouting Vietnamese in my office. It's not billable.

After I hang up, I sit still for a while, and stare out the window, re-composing Lawyer Oanh, as opposed to Daughter Oanh. I smile at the clear picture I have of my family in my parents' living room, seated on the ground playing cards, and scrambling noisily over each other whenever more drinks, more food or trips to the bathroom are required. I wish I was there. Suddenly, I begin to cry.

Unfortunately, my tears roughly coincide with a knock on my door, and I have barely any time to become Lawyer Oanh when The Boss walks in. I do not initially look up at him, but I know I will have to. I am one of those people who, when they cry, end up with red splotches all over their face. I still have tear tracks on my cheeks, my eyes are all red and swollen, my nose is running, and even my forehead is splotchy. I just know.

I take a deep breath and look up at him. The look on his face almost makes me laugh; he was just about to say a cheery hello, but has been arrested by my tear sodden face. I manage to hiccup out, "I'm okay. I just rang my family for New Year. I'll be fine in 10. Can I come see you then?" "Of course, of course," he says backing out, "Everything's really okay?" "Everything's really okay, Boss. I just miss them because it's the New Year." He looks at me oddly, and does not leave my office.

This means I have to compose myself in front of him. How aggravating. I take a deep breath, take my glasses off and rub furiously at my eyes. I put my glasses back on. I normalise the conversation for him: "Any new claims, today?" "No," he says, "The mail's pretty boring, actually." I can tell he is relieved and ready to pretend he did not glimpse non-Lawyer Oanh.

Then he says,"The New Year?" I smile at him. "Yes. It's the Lunar New Year." He still looks uncertain. Inwardly, I sigh. "Chinese New Year. But the Vietnamese have it too, and we call it Tet, or the Lunar New Year. I'd rather not call it Chinese New Year. Because I'm not Chinese."

Y'all have a good one.

Lessons Learned

1. When attending at work, on a Monday morning, somewhat earlier than I usually am but not earlier than I should be, and staring out admiring the church spire that I have never before seen from my office window, my thought should not be, "Oh, I've never noticed that I had a view of the church spire before," but rather, "Oh, my goodness, what on earth happened to my tree? And poor Mr Squirrel and his nest?"

It was not until after my cup of tea, as I looked into the distance wondering whether something so rectangular could still be called a spire, that I realised my tree was hacked off at window height - right below the squirrel's nest. I had spent happy otherwise-billable minutes watching a squirrel dart into and out of his* nest, presumably storing up precious nuts for winter. I hope the tree-loppers gave him sufficient warning to move his goodies, and his home, before so brutally demolishing all the top branches. Now the tree is all ivy, and not tree at all, and I have no squirrel to watch nor tits (little sparrow-like birds) to gaze at in contemplative or procrastinatory moments.

* I don't know for certain it's a him. I just prefer giving an animal a gendered pronoun, rather than calling him, "it". I do have a tendency to anthropomorphise. Although I do not seem to have qualms calling babies and young children, whose gender I cannot readily identiy, 'it'. I think I need to re-examine my pronoun usage. In my defence, babies and young children grow up to articulate their own identities; animals and inanimate objects (which I also tend to anthropomorphise) rarely do, at least not comprehensibly to me.

2. When it is winter in England, and you are all warm and snuggly and able to walk about in a t-shirt inside your heated home, it does not mean you can walk outside (for example to the shops for some mozzarella cheese) in the same t-shirt with nary a jumper, nor a coat, nor a hat. Gloves and scarf would have been uneccessary, however, as it was only 11 degrees, and not single digits. Gloves and scarves are only necessary for single digit weather.

I still forget that the temperature inside is not at all reflective of the temperature outside. In our home in Brisbane, the weather outside came right on inside. Some winter nights were rather chilly, but hardly life-threatening. The wooden walls did nothing to insulate us. In our flat in England, there is double-glazing (two panes of glass on the windows), and brick and mortar walls, and strange 'night-storage' heating, which doesn't quite seem to work (the storage part; the heating part works fine).

We had no appropriate* cheese for our dinner of pizza, and as I had just arrived home from work, I voluteered to go down to the local corner store. Somehow, the fact that I had peeled off my layers (windproof jacket, fleece jumper) did not alert me to the cool weather outside. I just put my shoes on again and walked out. It was a fast walk to, and from, the shops. I suppose I could have gone back inside for a jumper and coat once I had exited from the flat, but the cold didn't really hit me until about 10 metres from our front door. And then I realised I was an idiot. But an idiot who was getting more acclimatised to the cold. So, plus and minuses.

* We had nettle and garlic flavoured cheddar, and parmesan, either of which would have been fine if I were lazy, but I was feeling all energetic-like.

3. I feel that lessons should come in threes. Sadly, there is no third lesson.

I cooked pho!

I knew that leaving Brisbane for England would mean that my cravings for Vietnamese food was unlikely to be sated without a visit home. When I emailed my sister to remind her of the date that I was arriving in Australia, and asking her to arrange a family get-together for the following day, her response was to ask me what I wanted to eat. We decided that we would have goi cuon (transparent rice wraps) for lunch and then pho for dinner.

The entire time I was in Brisbane, I ate. I had breakfasts, brunches, lunches and dinners organised, visiting some old haunts, hanging out in newly married friend's houses and stuffing myself silly with my family's cooking. Um cooked everything she knew I liked, often all at the same time. Ba, too, joined in the cooking and made some of my favourite dishes. I ate the noodle soup of my region (bun nuoc leo) for dinner and breakfast, together with caramelised prawns, steamed crab and rice. On another day, I had banh xeo (crispy pork and prawn pancakes), spring rolls, more caramelised prawns and my mother's special deep fried chicken that she makes for the kids, but that I always end up eating. Um had bought a box of mangoes, and kept lamenting that the dragonfruit in my father's garden (which fruited in riotous abandon last year, right after I arrived in England) would not even flower while I was home. After finishing the main dishes, and while I still sat at the dining table nattering away to my siblings, Um would pull out a mango and start peeling it. I could not say no.

I am back in England again, in the cold, and contemplating what to do to celebrate tet this year. Last year, we were not settled and mostly friendless. This year, we are settled, and we have friends, and I would like to have a more noisy Tet. I love cooking for people, and because it's winter, I decided I would cook pho.

I have never in my almost 30 odd years cooked pho for myself. And I have lived away from home pretty much since I was 18. As a matter of fact, I do not cook all that much Vietnamese food. I tend to rely on my siblings and my mother for that. To ensure I do an okay job, I had to cook a trial batch, which is what I did last weekend.

First, I had to collect the ingredients. Most of the spices I have on hand. Our spice cupboard was magnificent in Brisbane, and it took about 6 months for the spice cupboard here to mimic the glory of the past, but it does. So I knew that I would have cinnamon, star anise, cloves and coriander seeds at home. I also had rice noodles from a previous stock up trip to the Chinese grocers. All I needed was the fresh stuff: bean sprouts, basil, coriander, spring onions, and limes. I knew I could not get the one herb that makes an average bowl of pho, better and a good bowl of pho, perfect: ngo rai. I don't know what ngo rai is in English. I've seen it referred to as Thai coriander (in Cairns, Queensland, which made me bristle with silly affront), thorny cilantro or perennial coriander. Oh, and the beef bones and beef to make up the rest of the soup.

Getting the beef bones was remarkably difficult. My partner had intended to do our grocery shopping at Sainsburys (an English supermarket) while I was at work, so I emailed him my list of ingredients that I would need. He was informed that Sainsburys are not permitted to sell meat on the bones, and that everything comes to them pre-packaged. I had forgotten to tell him that oxtail could be substituted for beef bones.

The next day, I went to Waitrose (another, slightly more upmarket, English supermarket - even the supermarkets in the UK are class structured. Shamefully, Waitrose is my favourite supermarket). I went to the butcher counter and asked if they had beef bones. I was told the same thing as my partner: that everything came to them pre-prepared and packaged. I asked for oxtail. The butcher counter guy looked at me apologetically and gestured towards the customer whom he had just served: I just sold my last one to him! I looked over at the other customer, and brief thoughts of violence occurred. I smiled at the butcher counter guy, and assured him it was okay.

I then went to an 'International Food Market and Halal Butcher'. Their meat counter was much more prosaic, and less surgical, than Waitrose's. When I asked for beef bones, the butcher said: Fish bones? No, I am a butcher! (My Aussie twang clearly lingers). I spoke more clearly and the butcher walked over to where large hunks of meat lay: Which one do you want? Surprised, I asked him if he had anything smaller. He looked at me strangely and picked up one of the smallest pieces and weighed it. Only one kilogram. Four pounds fifty. I looked uncertainly at him: the piece of meat was twice the diameter of the thickest part of my thigh. I said: Um, do you have anything smaller? You can have it for four pounds, he said. I was not concerned about the price; just what on earth I would do with a kilogram of beef bone. Okay, said I, but can you cut into maybe four smaller pieces? He quickly hacked at the meat, and it fell expertly into four large chunks: Like this? I thanked him and took away the meat.

At home, I used two of the chunks, and froze the other two, safe in the knowledge that if my first pho venture did not succeed, I had another two chunks with which to try again.

My pho recipe comes cribbed from the internet - matter of fact, it was how I found Wandering Chopsticks, when I googled 'pho recipe' more than a year ago. Mostly, I needed a recipe to double check what was in the broth. I knew that onion, ginger and star anise went in, but cinnamon, cloves and coriander seeds surprised me. Last time I ate at my brother in law's, I checked his broth: there were the cinnamon and the cloves. I tried to telephone my brother in law to ask him for tips, but he was not at home. I rang another sister instead, not for cooking tips as she is such a terrible cook she once burned chao, just to chat because I get despondent if I ring my family and come away having spoken to no one. The joy of a large family is that you just ring the next number and then the next, until someone answers.

Here is my recipe, although it is mostly Wandering Chopsticks', and I suspect she is a better cook than me. I think I have said on this blog before that I am a bad recipe follower. My recipes are imprecise, because I am. I substitute and I don't measure ingredients. And I don't know how much a pound or a quart is.

For the broth, you will need:-

Beef bones: I used about 500 gms for two people. Although my soup would have fed four. I suspect that if you cook this for more people, you just increase the water and the beef bones, but don't increase the other flavourings. I'll report back on that one, as I intend to cook pho for at least 15 people.

One surprisingly large onion. (Your onion does not have to surprise you with its largeness, but mine did me.)

Also, you can add garlic: half a clove is a good amount. Somewhat unusually, we were out of garlic at home, so none went into my stock.

A decent knob of ginger: about the length of your thumb and at least twice as thick.

One carrot: chopped into finger sized chunks.

One or two sticks of cinnamon (my stick was very long, so I just used one), a handful of star anise, some cloves and some coriander seeds: dry fry these before throwing into the stock.

A fry pan for dry-frying, a stock pot for cooking stock in, and another pot for parboiling.

All the flavourings (except the beef bones, which is too hideous to be photographed).

To cook it:

Chop the carrot up first. Leave it wherever you chop it.

If you, like me, are not fortunate enough to have a gas cooker, prepare the onion and ginger by sticking it under the griller, almost touching the element. Leave it there while you do everything else, but remember to keep an eye on it, and perhaps ask your partner to turn off the smoke alarm. If you're using garlic, do the same with it as you do the onion and ginger.

Start boiling a lot of water. I initially used two litres (but ended up using much more). Throw the carrot into the water, and leave it well enough alone.

Wandering Chopsticks and Viet World Kitchen gave me a tip I had not heard of before: parboiling the beef bones, rinsing and then using in the stock. This is to get rid of impurities, so that one gets a nice clear soup. My mother used to make me stand at the pho stock pot, scooping out the muck as it rose to the surface. It was peaceful work, and I enjoyed it.

I followed this tip. And you know what? It works brilliantly. No muck to scoop off, so it meant I could wander away from the stock pot to read my book! I highly recommend parboiling the bones, for oh, maybe five minutes (until the meat goes white, and the water gets frothy) and then rinsing the bones quickly in warm water before throwing back into the stock pot.

I parboiled my bones in a separate pot, because I knew I would have plenty of time to do the dishes while the stock bubbled away. This meant I could have some water on the boil (with carrot!) and that I could just rinse and throw the bones straight into the water.

Then, dry fry all the spices and throw them into the stock pot too.

Check that the onion and ginger are nicely burned. If there are any too-burnt bits, peel them away, and then throw onion and ginger into the stock pot.

My gently simmering stock.

Let the whole mixture boil for a couple of minutes, turn the heat down and then do the dirty dishes (chopping board, parboil saucepan, breakfast/lunch and too many mugs of tea leftovers). Stir the stock, turn the heat down again, and wander away, preferably to read a good book (but not so good that you forget the stock).

I had a jug of boiled water ready at all times to top up the stock if it got too low, and also to refill my cups of tea while I read my book, but that's a less integral part of the recipe. Check the stock every now and then, and stir.

I perhaps boiled my stock on too high a temperature, as the water got dangerously low (it no longer covered the bones!) after about one and a half hours. After topping up, I turned the heat from mark 3, down to mark 2, and left it again for another hour. Even mark 2 was a little too high, so I turned it down to mark 1. Basically, it needs to simmer ever so gently. You don't want it just keeping warm, and you don't want it boiling. You want the water to burst occassionally with a bubble. Mark 1 worked for me.

All up, I let the stock simmer for about four hours. In the last hour, I prepared the fresh stuff to go into our bowls (rinse bean sprouts, basil and coriander, chop limes, thinly slice red onion and spring onions, arrange nicely on plate). My partner sliced a 250gm sirloin steak super thinly, because he's good at that sort of thing. I cooked the rice noodles last, using the same element that I had cooked the stock on. While I was rinsing the rice noodles, I moved the stock pot back to the element and let it boil over.

All the fresh stuff.

The finished soup.

I have not bothered to tell you how to cook the rice noodles. Just follow the packet instructions.

Fill bowls with noodles - but don't overfill, because the noodles expand while you're eating.

The sliced beef is then cooked in a ladle held in the stock pot, and the soup is spooned into the noodle bowls.

Table setting for pho, with fruit bowl and stack of magazines, miscellaneous correspondence and one Christmas card.

Each person adds the herbs and sprouts as they wish. My family uses hoi sin sauce as the dipping and flavouring sauce. I am yet to find a brand of hoi sin sauce here that I like.

The verdict? My pho was a success. It was such a success, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product, with herbs and sprouts. My partner and I just dug right in. We ate it the following day for dinner, and it was still delicious.

Close up of my bowl, sans herbs and sprouts.

A reflective moment

It's the season to be reflective. So this is me reflecting.

What a miserable blogging year I had. It started off oh-so well, with a blog every week. Every week! And then I discovered (in no particular blameworthy order) Facebook, Online Scrabble, and English summers. There was also the minor matter of my ongoing work-life crisis*, which I am still contemplating whether or not to blog about.

*That's crisis in the current newspaper language. In that it's been stop-start since the beginning of the year and no one is probably going to get hurt, who has not got hurt already.

So, Facebook. It's a great timewaster. I joined just prior to my "becoming a UK solicitor" exams, and spent hours prettying up my profile, loading the books I'd read and movies I'd seen this year and searching the likely and unlikely suspects whom I thought would have joined Facebook. There was a cacophony of internet squeals as old friends from high school and my uni years found me, and kept thinking I was in London. I'm in South East England. Not London. Following on from the internet squealing, I made a number of treks up to London where 'real life' squealing was indulged in, as well as delicious (but rather expensive) meals. My tummy and my heart swelled, and then I returned to my everyday life, one weekend and many pounds poorer. I have, more or less, kept in contact with these rediscovered friends. I am at best a sporadic correspondent (hard to believe, I know), so the mere fact of contact every few months or so is a reasonably good thing.

And then Online Scrabble (or rather, Scrabulous) found me. I don't remember how it all started (the whirlwind of the romance, you see) but, rather quickly, I found myself playing at least 5 games simultaneously. Indeed, I have not played less than 5 games simultatneously since I started playing Scrabble online. This is probably not all that many in comparison to other people. But my time is not my own. From the hours of 9am until 6pm most days, I am required to account for at least 100 six-minute blocks of my time (except for lunch). "Playing Scrabulous" is not a billing code for which I can, ethically, charge clients. I am learning to accept that I will not play a move in every game, every day. And I'm okay with that.

English summers came upon me as a strange, and very pleasant, surprise. Living in Queensland one is not privy to the joy of daylight savings. I guess when one is close to the equator, and generally without seasons anyway, the length or brevity of the day is not really that pertinent. But oh! the length of the English summer days! What joy, what bliss! All those hours to fill with hills to walk on and food to eat and drink to imbibe and friends to visit and music festivals to attend. I had a fabulous but exhausting English summer, in which every weekend - and most weeknights - was filled with some activity. This seeped into English autumn as well, because the trees changing colour was just oh-so exciting, that I had to be out there *looking* at it. And here I am, in the middle of English winter, still pondering the joys of seasons. I love the cold. I grin maniacally as I cycle to work, infecting or disturbing my fellow non-car commuters with my four-year old joy at the frost, the biting cold, and the hope for snow.

And here are some maunderings about me & my work, or my work & my life, or my life, which is mostly my work:-

I remember being quite passionate and *into* my work when I initially started in full-time employment. My job then was more research oriented. I then started work in a private practice firm - I had previously worked in a private practice firm as receptionist / research clerk / general dogsbody and quite enjoyed it. I would have wildly fluctuating levels of enjoyment of my work, but I was also given a lot of freedom to do what I wanted if there was nothing else for me to do. Some days I would be holed up in the library researching, or typing madly, and others I would be surfing the net or reading a novel.

In full-time employment, I worked efficiently and well (I think) and liked best researching an area of law to make a legal argument. My favourite piece was a successful submission to an appeal tribunal: my written argument was incorporated, almost wholesale, into the tribunal's judgment. It was also a great piece of work because I overcame some major personal issues with the client and the facts presented to me, to make that legal argument. I knew when I was able to do that, that one of my major concerns with being a lawyer - the extent to which my prejudices would affect my work - was overcome. That was a great moment for an articled clerk.

I also liked the client interaction and just fitting the facts of their problem to a legal solution. It was, mostly, satisfying work. But there were lengthy periods when I questioned the value of what I was doing. Who was I helping, and why?

Then, I started working in commercial law. Although the work was pretty dry and there was very little client interaction, I found the mechanical work satisfying in its odd way. And it was very clear who I was helping and what I had to do to help them. I was helping a company make more money. Simple. I could put up with it because I knew it was short term, and I got given smaller pieces of research to keep me interested in the law (my bosses knew I liked doing research, and that was supposedly rare). It was like doing factory process work: satisfying when it's done for the simple reason that it is now done. But there's no bigger meaning behind it. Or what bigger meaning there was, was much too long-term and big to be comprehended.

I am now in an area that I believe I want to remain in. But I am not always happy. As a matter of fact, I am sometimes bored. Part of this is my own fault, and not the fault of the work. I could engage myself in it, but I don't. I think some part of me has changed, and I don't love doing this as much as I used to.

The things I like about being a lawyer is fitting a factual problem to a legal solution. What I don't like is that you may not agree with the outcome that you are assisting your client to obtain.

I did say something in a random conversation with my boss which surprised me as being both accurate and true (in that I did beleive it). I said that there is no reason why the people whom we help have to be deserving of that help. If they have the legal right, than we can assist them to assert their right. They don't have to be deserving people. Money should not be the barrier to people asserting their rights - but it often is.

It is very clear who I am helping now - each of the individuals who come my way - and why. It is tangible. But sometimes, I don't agree with it. And sometimes, I don't like it. And sometimes, I'm bored of it. Each of those feelings happens to me every day. And each work day seems to involve some navel gazing on my part. (Navel gazing is also not billable time, in case you're wondering).

Working in the law, on the side of the individual, is not satisfying work. Because you have an almost insurmountable opposition (the case law, the legislative law, the sheer weight of resources on the other side), but you have to believe that your meagre presence is worth something. That asserting a legal right, even if the odds are poor is important to the whole legal structure.

I believe this, and yet it is a hard pill to swallow. To put it into practise everyday is hard.

My 2008 looks set to be more of the same. I don't expect to come to conclusions about how I feel about my work. I do expect to post more often. Let's see how I go.

Happy New Year, all and sundry.

Walking Home Again

I had a couple of experiences which jolt me with surprise about how I view my safety.

1. Walking home from work

I walk home from work through a large expanse of park, called 'The Common'. I find this an exceedingly pleasant way to end my working day. With the long summer hours, I can even walk home when I have had a late day at work. I tend to change my working shoes into running shoes, and I leave my work shoes at work, under my desk.

Other uses of The Common are fellow walking-commuters, evening-exercisers, dog-walkers and youthful layabouts. I say hi to the exercisers and dog-walkers, but my fellow walking-commuters ignore me (and I them), and I am much too uninteresting for the youthful layabouts.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking home and otherwise meandering inside my own head. There were three youthful layabouts, two female, one male, sitting on a park bench. As I passed, one of the girls said something, which I knew to be aimed at me, but which I did not quite hear. The tone was derisory. I chose to ignore her. Then she spat at me. Frothy white goop landed at my feet; I stepped over it and kept going. Behind me, the boy shouted something I could not make out and all three started laughing. When I got home, I was shaken. No one has ever spat at me before. I have had racist comments yelled at me. I have had sexist comments yelled at me. I have been grabbed, and held, by a mentally unstable man - I did not feel threatened by him and managed to extricate myself. I have had a broken bottle shoved into my face, also by a mentally unstable man, and again, I did not feel particularly threatened (although I was scared). The spitting was just uncalled for. And it made me feel unsafe. (I half knew the man with the broken bottle would jab it in my face).

2. Walking to the shops

I walk to and from the grocery stores. Not too long after the above spitting incident, I was walking home with my shopping. Picture, if you will, a young east-Asian woman in a pinstripe suit with a grocery bag under each arm - one bright orange, one hessian - just minding her own business and perhaps frowning a little as she carried her heavy groceries home. Going in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road, were two young women and one young man. The young man shouted something at me, which sounded like: ra ra ha ha ra. And then there was laughter. I stopped. I went to turn towards them to say something - anything - back. Except I did not know what. And the thought that ran through my head? This is not a nice area. I've heard of cars being burnt here. I walked on in fear. About a few metres later, I got really angry. I hate it when fear prevents me from defending myself against inanity.

3. Running through the Common

I occasionally (I've done this once, but I would like to more, hence the choice of word) run through the Common on my way home, for excercise. Usually when I run in the Common (on weekend mornings) I stick to the large paths. My partner on the other hand has waxed lyrical about how lovely ducking into the woods themselves are.

On my first afternoon run, I took the large paths, then darted off on a walkers only path. I ran up beside the lake and saw a lovely path into the forest, that twisted enticingly out of view. I took it. I ran until I came to a junction where three paths crossed. I chose one that veered off in the direction of home, as it was about roughly time to circle back again. The path I chose got narrower and narrower, and windier and windier. I leapt fallen trees and dodged nettle as much as I could. Then the blackberry bushes grew so close together I had to use my hands and shoulders to clear my path. I had turned so much I no longer knew which direction I was facing. I heard laughing voices in the near distance. I freaked out, did an about face and retraced my path back to the junction, back to the walkers only path, back to the nice large open concreted-over path. Heart thumping more from fear than from the exertion, I jogged on home again.

Not only had the laughing teenage voices reminded me of my earlier unpleasant encounters, I realised that no one knew where I was. My partner knew only that I was running home, via the Common. He would not expect me for another hour, would not start to worry for perhaps another two hours. I know that I would not, in his position. Work would not realise until the next day, and no one knew which direction I headed off in anyway. Only my partner and work would note my absence in the short term.

When I lived in a share house and went running in the early mornings, I drew a map of my planned path and my expected return time for my housemates. I almost always returned before any of my housemates even aroused themselves from sleep. Only one housemate, in my five or six years of house sharing, even saw my map. But I felt much better with the thought that, if I did not return and there was a note to say where I had been, someone would think to come looking for me.

When I lived with my parents, the rule was that I would inform them if I would not be home before dark. In my early university years, my mother got used to me walking out of the house calling out not to expect me home before her bed time. I once overheard my mother on the telephone to my aunt, complaining about how I was always out and she had no idea where. I tried a few times to tell her I was at a library until it closed, but she did not believe me. I think she wanted to believe that I was out with boys, taking drugs and partying hard, rather than holed up on the fourth floor of the law library with casebooks, or the second floor of the arts library with journals. At worst, I was in a cafe or movie theatre with friends. My juvenile delinquency never did get off to the right start.

I have got lazy. I do not do the little things anymore that make me comfortable doing activities which otherwise put me at risk of the nebulous thing out there that is dangerous to young women. I forgot to live in fear, because I have my mobile phone and my partner is well-versed with my habits. But the fear has come back in this New Place, so I need to find my parameters again.

Autumn Leaves

English summers are much like Brisbane winters: the sun is bright, the skies are crisp blue and the temperature is mild (in the mid teens Celsius; I haven't a clue Fahrenheit). And both are short-lived. I do love Brisbane winters.

In a few days, it will be autumn here. I am looking forward to autumn, having never experienced it before. My sisters’ favourite poem/song when we were younger was ‘mu thu la bay’ (In Autumn, the Leaves Blow). It is an epic poem about a young, beautiful girl who falls in love with her tutor. He has to leave her in the autumn. Like all good Viet poems, he goes off to war and dies. He never comes back for her, and in autumn, with the leaves falling off trees and blowing around her, she remembers him. Autumn is a poignant and nostalgic season.

Intellectually, I understand this and I recognise the symbolism. Viscerally, emotionally, the images of autumn do not evoke much response in me.

In my formative years, I read the autobiography of Jill Ker Conway (The Road to Coorain and True North). I mentioned it in a book meme. I loved how the landscape and environment grounded and influenced Jill Ker Conway's life and writing. I also interrelate with my environment; I have always personalised my living and working space, and find my moods affected by weather.

My lack of understanding of the English landscape, flowers and plants somewhat disorientates me, and at the same time reminds me that I have to learn, rather than refer to innate knowledge. I am eternally curious about berries and fruits and plants. When we walk in the countryside, I pick and squish and smell and peer. My partner continues on ahead and I chase him every few metres: I linger as something catches my eye, then I run to catch up. I was so happy to find acorns, in their cups, at the height of summer. I had never before seen an actual acorn - the symbol of old England is the gnarled and majestic oak - and the acorn speaks of mysterious connections. I am finding my place in this landscape of soft grass, nettle and acorns.

From early childhood, I wondered how my father related to the Australian environment and the ways in which it was different to Viet Nam. Of all my father's children, I have the vaguest memory of him as a vibrant man. For more than half my life, my father has been ill. But I can call to mind images of my father striding along a beach, or casting out a net and hauling it in with regular, assured movements, or the graceful swing of his arm as he cuts up fish, or the way his huge hands cup fluffy baby chicks, the same hands that will wring their necks in a few months' time. It was wonderful to see my father in Viet Nam, in land that he knew innately. He rested, elbow on the prow of our long tail speed boat, and he looked out at the Mekong. He looked like that land owned him, and he knew its ways. He squinted at the sky and said: It won't rain tomorrow and everyone - local Viet and Viet Kieu alike - believed him. And he was right. I can't describe how much Ba belonged to the Delta area, how he seemed to stand more erect and the pride of the land swelled around him. He shrunk again in Sai Gon, and then back home in Brisbane. But I got a meagre glimpse of who my father was before he came to Australia and I knew that the landscape infects my father, too.

*****

The leaves outside my office window are turning yellow and dropping off. I watch them curiously, and a little nervously because I want them to turn yellow, and then red, and then brown, and then (and only then) may they drop off. They don't mean much to me, these autumn leaves. But I am in a phase of transition now and I wonder if I will attach to autumn the fluttering emotions that currently affects how my identity is swilling into formation here.

The Bureaucracy

I have been filling out forms, lately.

I am terrible at filling out forms. Especially important ones that relate to me. I am very good at filling out forms for other people. After all a lot of my daily work involves form filling. (The life of a lawyer is a glamorous one, my friends.) From when I was young, I filled out forms for my parents and translated for them: Social Security forms, mortgage forms, citizenship application forms, medical forms. You name it and I have probably filled it out.

The form currently occupying my time is my "Becoming a UK Lawyer" form. It has more illegible crossings out on it than any I have filled in so far. I peer at the question and think: What do you mean? Does that apply to me? I recall having similar difficulties when applying to become an Australian lawyer. Perhaps it is the last way the system can weed out the unsuitables: If you cannot fill out this form, buddy, you're probably not cut out to be a lawyer.

The section on forms in the UK that bother me the most are the 'diversity' questions. A limp appendage to the rest of the form, this part comes last. There is a tick box (yes/no) for whether one has a disability and then a blank space where one can be artful in the description of one's deviation from the able-bodied world. Next, is my favourite question:

Please describe your ethnic background.

Instead of a few blank lines, like the disability question, there are 8 or so tick boxes.

They are:-

1. White / Irish
2. White / British
3. Indian
4. Pakistani
5. Bangladeshi
6. Chinese
7. Mixed Race
8. White / Other

I am flummoxed by these choices. I am exceedingly reluctant to tick the "White / Other " box. So I don't. I'm not white. But I do fit into a lot of 'Other' categories. Instead, I write in the empty space: Vietnamese. There, I am recognised. That part of my form will probably just be discarded as it cannot be inputted into a database and will therefore count as "no response".

I love the Mixed Race choice. You just tick it and then there's nowhere for you to say what mixture. It is as if, once you are a mongrel, the ethnic heritages that go to make up YOU are irrelevant. Mixed Race is a category of itself. And perhaps it is: an additional layer that is more than its composite parts. Nevertheless, I expect the parts that make up the whole are important to the individual. Important enough to be put on a form, anyway.

Rain

I have started to complain about the English weather, instead of being my usual chipper self. It has rained, almost without cessation since late May. I can recall two weekends of good weather in the last two months.

My umbrella, a farewell gift to me from my former place of work, could take the battering no more. Admittedly, it was neither wind nor rain that was my brolly's death knell. I sat on it. I heard a little crunching sound, which I blithely ignored. The very next time I opened up my umbrella, one arm flopped sadly. Although the brolly still protects me from the rain, the broken arm taps a staccato rebuke upon my head.

My trouser legs are not protected by any umbrellas, broken or otherwise. The bottoms of my jeans get saturated whenever I walk in the rain, which is almost every single day. Unaccountably, my right leg is better at avoiding puddles than my left: my left trouser leg is wet to mid calf; my right only to my ankle.

If there is rain, Brisbane is never far from my mind. Whenever I wake up to rain, my first thought is: I hope that's falling in the catchment area. This is one of my more unrealistic thoughts. I catch myself before the thought fully materialises and chant a little reminder: You are in England. Someone else is living in my house in Brisbane and it's their job to hope that any rain falls in the catchment area.